


Quod ad sanandum

by Rueluxxx



Series: Flamma [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes Revenge Road Trip, Bucky Barnes-centric, Fluff, Gen, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Not Canon Compliant, Still have no idea what I am doing, The whole thing is crappy, Tony Stark Has A Heart, personal enjoyment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-14 20:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8027488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rueluxxx/pseuds/Rueluxxx
Summary: He's two thousand years old, and his ability to pick up strays hasn't changed one bit.Bucky Barnes through the ages, featuring ice cream and vodka, Road Trips, killing people, reading and hoarding books, and baking cheesecakes.





	1. Tamen sanare non potest

It took him almost forty-something years to gather his flames and an additional three to get used to the ice cold fire that’s inside of him, how to bend it to his will. At that point, the training of his little spiders have finished and some of them are allowed to go to the field. The higher ups are already talking about implanting new memories and erasing him. 

His five spiders overheard it and tattled to him. They begged him not to let him be taken away, to find a way to be free, to run they’ll cover for him. He squished all of them into his chest with strong arms and kissed their hair in turn, and stayed silent. 

The next night, he stole as much gear and weapons and ammunition as he can, transported it all into various safe houses. The handlers said it was his last night and he’s allowed some freedom. He asked for his little spiders, and kissed each of their foreheads, hugged them to his chest, his whispers almost non-existent, muffled in their brown and blond and red and black hairs. They are all stoic and stiff as if couldn’t wait for him to get out of their lives.

Flamma quia aranearum.

He whispered. And blue flames burst from his back, from his metal arm, from his shaggy hair. Flames that turned into great feathered wings that blocked the suddenly visible moonlight and shielded his little spiders. Flames that turned into cold tendrils that melted the flesh off any agents that they came across. Flames that turned into explosions in the air and underground. 

The explosions died down, the tendrils went back into his body, and his pair of great moonlight blue wings collapsed into a dark blue coat with long coat tails. It was snowing, it was always snowing. He gathered the two youngest spiders into both arms, smiling softly when they buried their heads into the soft feathery collar of his coat. He bundled his ridiculous long coat tails around the remaining girls, making sure they each have a fistful of his coat that can be wrapped around themselves like a scarf. And set out towards the night. 

They settled in a quiet town in Romania on a quaint little house near a medieval stone bridge. He ripped out his own feathers to sew blankets and pillows so they wouldn’t sleep on the floor with only rifles and handguns to cuddle with. He pulled himself apart looking for that warmth in his fires before it turned cold as a Russian winter just to light the dusty fireplace so they wouldn’t be so cold.

He sews them new clothes, thick wool jackets that accented their hair and brought out their eyes. He helped them pin their hair into curls and let them cut his greasy locks. 

He read stories to his smallest one, Yelena, about a phoenix that would never die and could never be alive. He cut and curled Natalia’s hair so that it would better frame her face. He used best of his espionage abilities to break into the local bookstore and steal books for Leila. He drew complicated diagrams of places that he couldn’t build and places he wants to visit for Anastasia. He bought a second-hand camera for Valeria so she wouldn’t forget her memories.

They sparred every weekend, and he sharpened their knives every day after dinner.

He tried to make up as much of their childhood as possible while making sure that they could still be the best in their fields. They never questioned his wings that were growing bigger each year, nor his flames that never seemed to get warm. He knew they are going to leave in the next decade or so, wants to set out into the world with an arsenal at their back and their guardian angel protecting them. They were all chosen for the Red Room because of how much they enjoy killing, and he respects their choices too much to say no.

He doesn’t worry as much as he should have and wished them all good luck when they told him they want to set out.

He gave them his feathers, and a set of words if they want to meet up again. He kissed all of them on their foreheads, most of them taller than him now. 

They spent 10 years in Romania, then Germany, then Italy, then France, then England before separating. 

He smiled encouragingly when Natalia left, the last one. She debated furiously with herself for four days in their cobblestone house in London, and only decided when he told her to get into a university and start conning people. She left and promised to write. He smiled. And a day later he left too. Shifting into a small bluebird that could easily be hidden beneath someone’s collar and started his explosions.

His wings grew and grew and grew until he could cover Europe with them, until he forced the hydra cells in Europe out into the open with his cold fires, until he saw them from his high perch in the sky and burned them to the ground until no one could ever remember they even existed.

It’s been almost three decades, his arm still hasn’t grown back, his wings are larger than ever, his flames warmer. Yelena is in Asia, Natalia in the States, Leila in Canada and the rest in either Africa or the Middle East. He flew to the States to visit Natalia and found out she has joined SHIELD.

He introduced himself as the Winter Soldier. Flashed his wings for just a second too long, and dared anyone to come near him with his flames.


	2. Contra summae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky meets Tony Stark and gets a new arm.

He broke into Tony Stark’s mansion in California with nothing but his tac gear and a bag full of fat folders and metal components for his arm. He shredded that shiny silver thing when he sacked his first base in California. The Hydra in the Americas apparently appreciated using brute force to smash their obstacles rather than using a needle to clear it out of the way. He needed to remind himself not to put metal into a boiling pot of acid next time. He smelt the arm plates with vibranium and titanium and adamantium and his azure fires. He hoped that the best mechanic in the entire world could help him put his arm together before killing him.

And he did. Tony Stark gave him a bottle of vodka and told him to hold still. The black metal slowly but surely fusing together under the light of a dozen blue spotlights. After he finished the alcohol and didn’t get drunk, he started reading the mission report from 1991 because he’s bored and couldn’t wait to dig himself a new grave, and silently waited for the jury.

“Well, no." The engineer in front of him did not even stop with his smoldering iron, his amber eyes did not dim, the soft curl of his lips still remained.

"You didn’t kill them.” He was confused and shocked, he clearly remembered, and he was pretty sure that no Hydra or Soviet put Tony Stark into Chair.

“You didn’t kill them with the car crash.” He was still confused, but Tony continued. “Dad died five years later when his liver and kidney failed. Mom died two years after that from either grief or breast cancer.” Anthony Stark’s eyes were half hidden by his mess of dark hair, but there is no hate nor grief in his clear amber eyes, just a whole bucket of regret.

He was confused. He knew he had punched the brake lines, left the wrecked car on the side of the road, and took the package away. “Did he say anything? Before he died.” 

Tony curled his lips into not an insincere smile, “He said something about a Sergeant.” And fused the last plate onto his arm.

He wriggled his fingers and spun his arm around, sounds whirling and plates shifting as he moved. The shiny silver arm now a collage of black and gray and silver, the color moving across his arm like clouds over a storm brewing sky. He smiled, and he knew that some sort of spark has returned to his eyes, his now honey colored hair dancing as he laughed. He felt pieces of himself fitting back together, his mind rising fro the ashes because someone has remembered him. Someone has known him. Someone somehow knew to help him.

“Good evening, my name is James Barnes, former Sergeant of the 107th regiment of the U.S Army, 1941. I heard you are hiring, Mr. Stark.”

Tony blinked, confused, suddenly looking like his age of just over twenty. 

He suddenly wanted to repay Howard Stark. The not quite friend that he never actually wanted and the only one who remembered the lonely sergeant that fell off the train over 70 years ago. 

His first trigger word is “Sergeant.” Not enough to free himself, but enough for some of himself to flow through the cracks, and help. And save.


	3. Saeculum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has been with Tony for almost a decade, the millennium passed and became 2001, his arm turned from a swirling mass of black into a storm cloud of gray.

He has been with Tony for almost a decade, the millennium passed and became 2001, his arm turned from a swirling mass of black into a storm cloud of gray. The Winter Soldier became the number 1 enemy to Hydra and mob bosses and terrorist cells. And Bucky Barnes became the steel wall that protected Tony Stark from both gleaming swords and subtle knives. He was out of cryo for a long time, but his face didn’t age, his hair never turned gray. He still looked 27 years old, and he felt sad. 

He took up ballet, and cooking and reading. Tony gave him a salary that is well above a ‘bodyguard’ pay grade. He bought an apartment in Brooklyn, made the attic he was given into a library full of books and albums and CDs and Captain America comics. He stocked his pantry with junk food and his fridge with as many vegetables as possible. He often slept on the white leather couch reading rather than in his bedroom. 

There’s another bedroom down the hall, filled with stolen paintings and unused easels and sketchbooks. He has pillaged almost every single science fiction novel from the bookstore next door and dumped a great deal of money into collecting comics. 

He’s not afraid that people will come and trash his safe house, the little snippet of a home he has obtained. His house has wards, which is just a fancy word for invisible flames surrounding his home and his friends and family. 

Under the attic floorboards are his arsenal, his sniper rifles that were longer than his own height and his handguns and his many many ammunition. He takes care of Tony, and when someone even began to plan for his humiliation or demise, he dusted off his Dragonov and went to work.

He knew Hydra was out there, and he also knew that the best offense is the best defense. If he wants to keep his spiders and his Stark safe, then he will have to take down the Nazi squid that tried to stick its slimy tentacles everywhere.

Good thing he’s much more efficient at killing, thanks to them. He’ll put all of the skills they’ve given them to good use. He started at the Irish and British islands, and slowly went into the continent. Through France and Germany and all the way up to Sweden and the Netherlands. Surprisingly, there’s no Hydra in Switzerland or Liechtenstein.

There were many Hydra agents screaming at him before he shot them through the eyes, that “cut off one head, two more will grow back” dumbshit. He scoffed and blew the base sky high. He has killed at least two dozen hydra bases in just under two months, he has killed hundred of people. He doubts a lone body of a beast could hold that many heads without all of them trying to tear each other out. 

Besides, don’t they know how the first hydra was killed? When its head was chopped off, Hercules burned the stump with fire. 

His fire was not warm and healing anymore, thanks to that fall from the train in winter and being chained underneath a never ending arctic snow, forever staining his healing flames. But fire is still fire and fire burns.

He burned the Hydra heads in Europe, burned the heads in the worst winter wonderland in the world in his decade-long campaign. Tony just a phone call away and his spiders tingling at the back of his mind. He didn’t bother with Asia, especially China and Japan. Asia is like a titanium tank, he couldn’t even cross the border before being stopped with tanks and machine guns. If he couldn’t operative relatively freely unseen, then it would be impossible for Hydra.

He met a little archer called Clint Barton in a circus when he was crossing from Italy. The little boy no more than 16 could shoot a tightrope in half from a mile away, even though it is only using a bow and arrows, but it is still impressive as hell. He had five decades of training to become the best sniper in the world, but the little-abused kid, given a few more decades, could probably surpass him.

He bought him from the circus master, showed off his extremely dangerous and very well used metal arm for additional effect, called Tony for a custom made bow and arrows, and bought a dozen books in celebration. He took care of the mob boss in Italy that were too Nazi for his own tastes and being pleasantly surprised when Barton oohed and ahhed as he dragged the warehouse into the earth.

Natalia found him when they were traveling in California, the little red head girl turned beautiful young women bounced up to them in a light blue dress and asked them to come in. He knew it was love at first sight for Barton. He sighed and ruffled Natalia’s hair and introduced his two proteges to each other before buying them all ice creams and chicken pies and letting Barton show off in the carnival.

Natalia came away from the night fifty dollars richer and with an extremely fluffy purple unicorn.

He drove them all the way to DC, letting them talk extremely quietly in the back seat and bought them pie at every single roadside diner they came across. It was a road trip he hoped he could share with Tony when he got back. 

He walked into the Shield lobby as if he owned it, waved hi to almost but not quite retired Director Peggy Carter using his metal hand, swept around the room, and disappeared the next time after they blinked.

Barton didn’t say anything.

Tony is bitching and threatened to add lasers to his arm if he doesn't wrap it up and come back to New York in the next year because he is apparently shirking his bodyguard duties. He sighed in the most fake-exasperated way possible, shot the last Hydra agent in the head, and called Jarvis to arrange something for pick up.

He’s not surprised to see that Hydra has lynched themselves in almost every major alphabet agencies in the states, and it takes a long ass time for him to burn them out. 

That was also his first time using his fire to destroy Hydra bases, the explosions in Europe and Russia could’ve easily been attributed to the amount of bombs that was buried everywhere in the War.

But in America, because the US is the most meddling and paranoid country in the entire world, he has to use his flames. It brought him a strange disgust and satisfaction when he saw that his ice cold fire could still burn and melt, it is still flames, with just a tinge more corporeal. His blue flames literally melted the walls off the bases he sacked, and melting steel and iron and Chair and human flesh into the ground as if it never at all existed.

He went back to Tony in New York, started to actually do his bodyguard job for some reason, got the apartment, bought records and books and watched a movie every single night and bought more books. He met up with Natalia every Thursday for either ice cream or vodka, and Clint every 15th of every month for sniper lessons and he does all of their paperwork in exchange of limited editions of Harry Potter figurines.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saeculum ~ Latin ~ ever

**Author's Note:**

> Flamma quia aranearum ~ Latin ~ Flames for my spiders.
> 
> If this comes off as Out of Character or being a Mary Sue, sorry. But I did not write this because I want to write this beautiful angst emotional novel, I just wanted to give the best to my favorite character, and if this rubs you the wrong way, the door is over there.


End file.
